"This is a pretty neat story and an interesting thing that few of us know. It's brief, so please read. (FROM A DOCTOR)A cou ple of days ago I was running (I use that term very loosely) on my treadmill, watching a DVD sermon by Louie Giglio... And I was BLOWN AWAY! I want to share what I learned.... But I fear not being able to convey it as well as I want. I will share anyway.
He (Louie) was talking about how inconceivably BIG our God is... How He spoke the universe into being... How He breathes stars out of His mouth that are huge raging balls of fire.. . Etc. Then He went on to speak of how this star-breathing, universe creating God ALSO knitted our human bodies together with amazing detail and wonder. At this point I am LOVING it (fascinat ing from a medical standpoint, you know.) .... And I was remembering how I was constantly amazed during medical school as I learned more and more about God's handiwork. I remember so many times thinking.... 'How can ANYONE deny that a Creator did all of this???'
Louie went on to talk about how we can trust that the God who created all this, also has the power to hold it all together when things seem to be falling apart...how our loving Creator is also our sustainer.
And then I lost my breath. And it wasn't because I was running my treadmill, either!!!
It was because he started talking about laminin. I knew about laminin. Here is how Wikipedia describes them: 'Laminins are a family of proteins that are an integral part of the structural scaffolding of basement membranes in almost every animal tissue.' You see.... Laminins are what hold us together.... LITERALLY. They are cell adhesion molecules. They are what holds one cell of our bodies to the next cell. Without them, we would literally fall apart. And I knew all this already. But what I didn't know is what they LOOKED LIKE.
But now I do. And I have thought about it a thousand times since (a lready)....
Here is what the structure of laminin looks like... AND THIS IS NOT a 'Christian portrayal' of it.... If you look up laminin in any scientific/medical piece of literature, this is what you will see...
Now tell me that our God is not the coolest!!! Amazing.The glue that holds us together.... ALL of us.... Is in the shape of the cross.
Immediately Colossians 1:15-17 comes to mind.'He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
For by him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible And invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities;
All things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him All things HOLD TOGETHER. '
Colossians 1:15-17
Call me crazy. I just thin k that is very, very, very cool.
Thousands of years before the world knew anything about laminin,
Paul penned those words. And now we see that from a very LITERAL standpoint,
we are held together... One cell to another... By the cross.
You would never in a quadrillion years convince me that is anything
Other than the mark of a Creator who knew EXACTLY what laminin
'glue' would look like long before Adam breathed his first breath!!
We praise YOU, Lord !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Well, I needed to send an e-mail back to my mom. So here's what I wrote
"Well, I don't think it's that amazing that out of the hundreds of thousands of proteins that are out there, that one of them happens to look like a cross. I did some reading, and it turns out laminin actually looks kinda like a flower when it's in solution (it doesn't stay rigidly shaped like a cross). I am a religious person and I have faith in God, but there is no reason why people need to continue looking for things like this - for intelligent design - for proof that God is so great. To me, the idea that God put together all the rules and set everything into motion is a much more awesome view of God than a God that had to tinker with every set thing in the universe to make it in his vision. Imagine being able to create all the beauty in the universe just by setting down a couple ground rules - the rules that scientists are working every day to understand (and to better know God through those rules). To me that is more amazing than anything anyone who believes in intelligent design comes up as an example of God's "tinkering".
I know there are plenty of doctors who don't believe in evolution, but they use evolution everyday to save lives and to treat sick people. Evolution helps us understand how diseases came to be, and how best to treat diseases. Doctors fight against the effects of evolution everyday when they have to treat someone with a multi-drug resistant bacterial infection. Picking and choosing examples is not "scientific" - it's the realm of science to have to explain everything - all the data. If this one protein (one of the many proteins that help "glue" us together) is in the shape of a cross, why isn't water in the shape of a cross - water is a lot more important to us than this one protein. Water happens to be in the shape of a mickey mouse head - does that have any grander purpose behind it?
Intelligent design is just a lazy man's way of making sense of things and makes my job as an evoluutionary biologist harder every day.
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